Foster on Film

In Victorian England, a wealthy man (Michael Redgrave) hires a repressed woman, Miss Gidden (Deborah Kerr), as the governess for his niece, Flora (Pamela Franklin), and nephew, Miles (Martin Stephens), giving her complete control as he never ventures to his country estate to see them.  The children appear well behaved at first, but Miles has

A series of interrelated vignettes of horrible deaths, Ju-On slowly reveals why ghosts are killing the living, and why it will never end. Quick Review: Ju-On is part of the Japanese new wave of horror started by Ringu.  The films in the movement tend to be more frightening than almost any other movies, and also

A vicious murder curses a house.  Anyone who enters it afterward dies. I expected Ju-On: The Grudge to be more frightening and visually compelling than its video prequels (see my Ju-On 1 & 2 review).  This was a big screen release with a bigger budget, but it is a sequel, and like most sequels, it

Dr Paul Eswai (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) is summoned to a remote village to perform an autopsy as part of a murder investigation.  The deeply superstitious and frightened populous is hostile to the doctor and his modern ways, relying on the local witch (Fabienne Dali) for safety from a force few are willing to speak of.  Only

In a small town in 1962, young Frankie Scarlatti (Lukas Haas) is locked in a school closet at night and sees the ghost of a girl reenact her murder.  Shortly after, the killer, with his face hidden, enters in order to retrieve incriminating evidence, finds Frankie, and strangles him.  But the boy is saved by

Hired to determine if there is life after death, Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill), a physicist and psychic researcher, Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), his wife, and two mediums, Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin) and Benjamin Franklin Fischer (Roddy McDowall), investigate the extremely haunted “Hell House.” A by-the-numbers retread of the standard ghost story, The Legend of Hell House

In 1972, the SS Corona Queen vanished in the Bermuda Triangle, taking with it Aaron Roberts’ parents. Now, the ship has returned, a derelict. Roberts (Judd Nelson), now a paranormal investigator, and three TV tabloid reporters catch a ride to the ship with salvage agent David Shaw (Lance Henriksen) and two employees (Jeff Kober, Mark Sheppard). Of course,

Hoping to help her destitute family and dying brother, young, innocent, Filipino Rosa (Alessandra De Rossi) has taken a job as a maid in Singapore with the Teo family. They are kind, though Mr. Teo is distant and Mrs. Teo is domineering. Their twenty-year-old son, Ah Soon (Benny Soh) is mentally retarded and likes Rosa a bit

John Blake (Robert Culp), discontent with city life, takes his wife (Samantha Eggar) and moves to his great-grandfather’s ruined country mansion.  But it is haunted and something doesn’t want him there. Quick Review: Not so much a completed film, but a series of scenes edited together with no concern for narrative structure, the randomly named

A wealthy young Scotsman invites eight of his friends (including Paris Hilton) to his estate.  A snowstorm maroons them, but that isn’t a problem until one of them reads from a strange book, freeing an evil ghost to possess and kill. I like the idea of a spirit that leaps bodies whenever its host is

Raving, French anthropologist Jean-Claude Pommier (Pierce Brosnan) is carried into an emergency room where he manages to bite Dr. Eileen Flax (Lesley-Anne Down) before dying. Flax now has Pommier’s memories of the last week. She experiences his arrival in town with his wife, and his discovery of a vicious street gang that turns out to

Yumi Nakamura (Kou Shibasaki) and her friends are having a more or less pleasant evening out (that’s as good as it gets for Yumi, who has never completely recovered from her childhood abuse) when one of Yumi’s friends checks her voice mail to find she’s gotten a call from the future—from herself—indicating the time of